The 51st Session of the UN Human Rights Council
12 September 2022 – 7 October 2022
Item 4: General Debate
26 September 2022
Statement of International-Lawyers.Org and GICJ
Delivered by Mr. Naji Haraj
We would like to remind the Council about the systematic and widespread human rights violations in Iraq. We have raised this issue many times before UN relevant bodies and are still of the firm belief that the situation requires special attention by this Council.
It is appalling that international crimes committed by the state and its affiliated Militias agents have gone without accountability. We have documented that since the 2003 illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq not a single perpetrator from those high-ranking officials has been brought to justice. The victims of those heinous crimes of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity are entitled to the protections of international law and cannot be removed from our collective memory.
It is also appalling that the Iraqi government continues to evade calls for accountability for thousands of arbitrarily detained and disappeared persons by branding them as terrorists solely on the basis that they derive from certain ethnic regions in Iraq. Human rights defenders in Iraq are subjected to abductions and assassinations merely for exercising their fundamental rights.
Therefore, International-Lawyers and Geneva International Centre for Justice repeat their calls to establish an international, independent Commission of inquiry to investigate all human rights violations in Iraq since 2003 in order to hold all perpetrators accountable.
Thank you.
Iraq, HRC51, enforced disappearances, accountability, Human rights violations, crimes against humanity, war crimes, Geneva international Centre for Justice, Geneva4justice, GICJ
